


36 Questions, or, How To Fall In Love Overnight

by gunpowdersunset



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Alfie is my son and i love him, Anachronistic, Angst, Awkwardness, Confessions, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Trauma, Truth or Dare, flimsy premise, tommy is a tsundere
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-04-06 21:18:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14065779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gunpowdersunset/pseuds/gunpowdersunset
Summary: Inspired by this NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/fashion/no-37-big-wedding-or-small.htmlThe article is about a study where sociologists came up with 36 questions that would increase intimacy between people who shared the answers with each other. The claim is that if you do this exercise with someone, you'll fall in love. So: what happens when Alfie and Tommy get locked in the cellar of Alfie's brewery overnight, with nothing but these questions for company?





	1. Chapter 1

“The idea is that mutual vulnerability fosters closeness. To quote the study’s authors, ‘One key pattern associated with the development of a close relationship among peers is sustained, escalating, reciprocal, personal self-disclosure.’ Allowing oneself to be vulnerable with another person can be exceedingly difficult, so this exercise forces the issue.” — from “The 36 Questions That Lead To Love”

~ ~ ~ ~

Tommy had always loved the smell of Alfie’s brewery. The damp tang of the spirits mixed with the dust and dew of the cellar…

Not brewery, bakery, he mentally corrected himself with a chuckle.

“Wot’re you laughin’ about, mate?” Alfie, sitting across from him, removed the pince-nez he had been using to read the newspaper and appraised him with those dusky blue eyes of his.

“Nothing, Alfie. Just amusing meself with me thoughts.” Tommy often got caught staring off into the distance—though usually in horror or despair, not amusement. He had gotten used to making excuses for his wandering mind, ever since the war. Ever since the tunnels…

“Always in your ‘ead, eh, Shelby? Wot’ve you got goin’ on in there, oi wonder?” Alfie’s guttural Cockney accent would have sounded absurd spoken by anyone but Alfie, with his formidable bass tones. Instead it always made the hairs stand up on the back of Tommy’s neck.

“Wouldn’t you like to know, Solomons…” You certainly would not like to know. Tommy and Alfie shared a grin, affected on Tommy’s part at least, and each returned to their work—Alfie perusing the racetrack listings, reading between the lines looking for amateur bookies trying to shoulder into the business, and Tommy going over his and Alfie’s copies of their shared transactions, ensuring there had been no funny business on the part of the self-proclaimed “wandering Jew.”

These evenings had become a monthly ritual, ever since Alfie had so readily betrayed the Peaky Blinders to Sabini. Tommy reasoned that a business partner willing to sell you to the highest bidder certainly wouldn’t be above cooking the books, and had made peace with the Jewish gang on condition of transparency. He thought Alfie might have agreed just because he wanted some company.

As usual, it was just the two of them, though Ollie, Alfie’s ever-present assistant, would be lurking somewhere around the brewery outside the office. Ollie seemed to watch them like a chaperone, popping in on them every now and then to make sure his master’s virtue wasn’t being besmirched by the likes of a Birmingham mick with a small-time bookie operation.

Though tonight, Tommy hadn’t seen Ollie for hours. The brewery outside had fallen completely silent, except for the drip-drip of the stills. A thought occurred to Tommy, and he rose, glancing out the door to Alfie’s office.

“Wot’re you up to, Shelby? Once upon a time, I knew a little man like you who kept peeking around, din’t he, and wouldn’t you know, one day I got so tired of this jumpy fuck I just took my stick, roight, and I—“

Tommy, half-listening, was more than used to Alfie’s anecdotes. He wondered what about him the Jew was used to. His catatonic voice, his closed-off manner, his somber mode of dress…

Alfie Solomons always seemed to bring up those kinds of thoughts. Around Michael, Lizzie, even Polly, he felt more like the person he wanted to be, the person he resolved to be when he got up in the morning. But around Alfie he couldn’t stop thinking about how great a distance lay between that ideal Thomas Shelby, and the paranoid, panicking shell of a man peering around the Solomons brewery, agitated over nothing.

Alfie was right to wonder what was going on in Tommy’s head, but he’d never know. The closest he would ever get was these evenings alone, which they spent in near-silence, and after which Tommy perfunctorily retreated to his mansion, to wait out another night drifting in and out of sleep, in and out of nightmares—but whether awake or asleep, alone in bed.

But tonight there seemed to have been a change of plans. Ollie was nowhere to be seen, nor were any of Alfie’s other workers, and when Tommy got to the door he saw it was firmly shut. Tommy pulled at the handle just to be sure, and the feeling in his stomach was confirmed. They were locked in.

“Alfie…you have a key to the cellar door, right?” Tommy called across the brewery, an instinct left over from the war keeping his voice low. Alfie, unbothered, shouted back at full volume:

“Wot? Never needed a key, ‘ave I? Ollie does all that!”

“Alfie, I think Ollie’s locked the door.” Tommy’s apprehension only grew in response to Alfie’s lack of concern.

“Nonsense. That auld fuck knows we’re down ‘ere, don’t he?” Alfie came shuffling out of his office, pince nez still hung around his neck.

Tommy watched as Alfie tried the door, then searched through the cellar without finding anyone. Finally:

“OI! OLLIE! WOT’VE YOU DONE, YOU BLOODY SOD?!” Alfie was pounding against the door with all his considerable strength, but no luck. Tommy wagered even Goliath couldn’t bring that thing down. They might’ve needed Goliath to put such a massive slab of wood up, for Christ’s sakes.

“Well, that’s done it. We’re in a bit of a pickle, mate.” Alfie had turned around, hands on his hips, though he didn’t look nearly as unsettled as Tommy felt.

“What’re we supposed to do now?” Tommy lit a cigarette. Trapped underground. Where had he heard that one before?

“Looks like we’re ‘aving a sleepover, Shelby.” Alfie grinned and clapped his hands together, moving toward the cabinet where he kept his best “bread.”

“So we can’t get out?”

“Not till Ollie comes ‘round at dawn. Fancy a whiskey?”

Tommy steadied his voice, then: “Yeah.” It wasn’t as if anyone was going to miss him at home, but the fact was Tommy hadn’t spent a night with anyone, in any sense of the term, since Grace died. He wasn’t enjoying that damp cellar smell anymore; now it reminded him of scrabbling in the dirt, and German voices just a few inches of tunnel wall away. He gulped the whiskey Alfie handed him and got back to the accounts somewhat abruptly. He wondered if there was some way he could make the work last all night.

After just a few minutes, Tommy could only focus on the dripping of the still and the ruffling of Alfie’s newspaper pages. He was running his finger over the same few lines but not taking in what he was reading at all. Alfie seemed to have finished with the races, and moved on to a new “lifestyle” segment the paper had probably thrown in to get people like Ada to read it. Tommy weighed the pros and cons of asking Alfie for another drink—on the one hand, conversation would be involved, but on the other, so would alcohol.

“Oi, Shelby—if yew could ‘ave anyone in the world ‘round for dinner, ‘oo would it be?”

At first Tommy didn’t think he’d heard the question right. “What?”

“If you could have anyone over for lily-and-skinner, ‘oo would you choose?”

“What is lily and skinner, Alfie?”

“Issa slang term, innit?! Means dinner, mate! ‘Oo would you ‘ave over to dinner if you could ‘ave anyone?”

“Alfie, what are you reading?”

Alfie shifted in his chair. “Er, it’s in this new section of the paper, innit.” He flipped the paper up so Tommy couldn’t see the article he was reading.  
Tommy rose and peered over Alfie’s shoulder before he could put the paper away. “The 36 Questions That Lead To Love?!” What kind of subject was that for a newspaper article?!

“Calm down, Shelby, I weren’t meanin’ nothing by it. Jus’ thought seein’ as we’re down ‘ere for the night, might as well get to know one anuvver. There was one time when I was up all night waitin’ on a deal to go down, waitin’ for a shipment wiv an associate, like, and after a couple hours talkin’ to this fuck we run out of fings to talk about, and I starts gettin’ bored, don’ I, so I jams me pistol—“ Alfie seemed to be making up this violent anecdote, and as he went on talking, Tommy could hardly believe it—the Jew was flustered. “Anyway, that’s why I ‘ad to ‘ire Ollie, innit.” Solomons finished off, somewhat defensively.

“My sister Ada would get a kick out of that rubbish.” Tommy said, nodding at the paper. He lit another cigarette, coughed for a minute or two, then went to sit back down. The damp air in this basement was getting to his lungs.

“Hmm, well excuse me for trying to get Thomas Shelby interested in anyfing uvver than checkin’ my pockets for his loose change…” Alfie returned to the paper in a huff, positioning it so as to block his view of Tommy.

A few more minutes passed. Tommy returned to reading over the same few lines without taking them in. What did the Jew mean by trying to ask him questions to make them fall in love? And how were you supposed to fall in love with someone by asking them who they’d fancy having around to dinner?

Alfie’s silence at his desk was much colder than usual. It was normally rather comforting, like a big friendly dog snuffling in its sleep by the fire. Tommy had also gotten rid of his dogs since Grace died. They always seemed so confused, wondering where she was.

“Can it be anyone?” Tommy didn’t look at Alfie as he said it.

“Wot?” Alfie looked up, disgruntled, from the paper.

“The person I’d have round to dinner. Could it be anyone, living or dead? And, you know, if it was a foreigner I’d be able to understand their language and suchlike?”

“Oh.” Alfie rustled the newspaper casually. “Yeah. Oi fink that’s roight.”

Tommy scratched at his work with a pen for a few more moments of silence, then: “Otto Von Bismarck.”

Alfie stroked his beard ponderously. “That kraut fella?”

“He’s the one who got all the krauts together into a single country. ‘E tricked all the kings of Europe into ‘anding him over the German states they controlled, and even once they knew what he was up to, he still outsmarted them. I’d like to trade tips with a savvy bloke like him, even if he were a kraut.” Tommy shuffled the newspaper uncomfortably. “Hrm. How about you? Who would you have ‘round to dinner?”

Alfie took a sip of “bread.” “Oi fink I’d ‘ave the queen.”

He went back to his newspaper for a moment while Tommy blinked in confusion. “What, Queen Mary?”

“Wot, ‘re you daft? Victoria!”

“How was I supposed to know that? Mary is the queen, you know, now.”

“But we said any time period, din’t we?”

“Yes, but—“

“Oi fink Victoria’d be a roight briney to have over for jim.”

“Alfie, what is jim?”

“Same thing as lily and skinner, innit!”

“Ah.” Tommy wondered how long he would need to spend around Alfie to understand his rhyming slang. Would he manage it in one night? He took a deep breath:

“What’s the next question?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, that took like a month. But here it is!

“‘Question two: would you loike to be famous? In what way?’” Alfie read the next question in what he hoped was a nonchalant tone of voice. He couldn’t believe this was actually working. It was absurd to imagine Thomas Shelby answering any personal question, much less a personal question taken from an article meant to make him fall in love with someone. Much, much less when that someone was a business rival who had double-crossed him in the past and was literally already planning to betray him again (Alfie made a mental note to get back to that priest about the kidnapping plan). 

And yet, despite his famous reticence, here was Tommy Shelby right in front of him saying: “I suppose I already am famous in a certain way, so I can say pretty surely that I do _not_ want to be famous in the way that makes Sabini send hitmen to beat me and leave me for dead.” 

Alfie gave a noncommital “hm” sound, leaving it unsaid that Sabini had come to Alfie, sat right in the same chair Tommy was sitting in right now, and discussed with him what reprisal was most likely to hold off these Birmingham amateurs who had made such a disturbance in his club. It crossed Alfie’s mind that it was silly for him to be nervous as a virgin around a man whose operation he had so thoroughly outmaneuvered multiple times, but such is love, he supposed.

Tommy continued: “However, I do rather enjoy being the kind of famous that has inbred Russian girls making crazy-eyes at me every now and then.” Alfie’s stomach seized. He had heard Tommy was having dealings with the Whites. “Not that I’m planning on being the kind of famous where I make eyes back.” Afie’s exhaled. Could Tommy have noticed him holding his breath?

“So, yer fancy the parts of fame where you get treated with respect, but not the type that’ll bring bruisers from other gangs down on yer ‘ead.”

“That’s right.” Tommy took a drag of his cigarette. Was it Alfie, or was Tommy smoking much faster than usual? Alfie had never touched cigarettes, but he suspected it would be pretty physically taxing to smoke any more than Tommy normally did. “That’s the dream, I suppose.”

“Would probably be hard to have the one wivvout the uvver, though, wouldn’t it?” Alfie mused.

“I suppose. The trick is not to get so caught up in the good parts of fame that you forget to guard against the bad.” Another drag. He was definitely smoking faster.

“Fanks for the wisdom, mate.” 

Tommy exhaled a bit more forcefully than usual, which was a laugh for him. “And what about you? How would you like to be famous?”

“Don’t think oi’d loike to be. My bread bakes best in secret, oi fink. But if oi was gonna be, oi think oi’d loike to be one of those people ‘oo just gives advice to other people. You know, like in the advice columns in the paper.”

“Advice columns? Is that in the lifestyle section too?”

“Yeh, oi fink so. People wroite to the paper askin’ how to solve their problems, and some bird wroites back what she finks they should do.”

“You think you’d be good at that? Wouldn’t you just advise everyone to solve their problems with indiscriminate murder?”

“Yeh, exactly.” Tommy snorted again. “Got a problem with murder, Shelby?”

“Not at all. And when people start killing each other all over London on your advice you certainly will get famous. You might even get people seeking redress.” 

“Well then I’ll just take my own advice now, won’t I?” 

After that, their back-and-forth picked up speed: “Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why?” 

“I suppose I tend to consider what I say before I say it.” Tommy mused.

“Oi just say whatever comes into me ‘ead whether I’m on the phone or not.” Alfie chuckled, and Tommy actually puffed out some of his smoke mid-drag that time.

“Next question: wot would constitute a perfect day for you?” 

“A day where I ‘ave a victory.” Tommy said almost immediately.

“No ‘olidays for you, eh, Shelby?”

“No rest for the wicked.” Shelby had a habit of turning the conversation away from personal matters with sardonic little comments like that. “And your perfect day?”

“Oi’d spend it doin’ me favorite ‘obby.”

“Your favorite what?”

“‘obby, mate. Like a fing you do for fun.” Alfie suspected Tommy was exaggerating finding it hard to understand his Cockney accent. But that was okay. Alfie was exaggerating his accent in the first place.

“Ah. And what is your favorite hobby?”

“Oi make bread.”

Tommy blinked. “You mean you would spend your perfect day in here making liquor?”

“Nope. This here’s me “bread,” but when oi take a day off oi like to whip up a loaf of me grandmuvver’s old family recipe. Came all the way from Russia. Even made it here when me mum didn’t.” Alfie’s own mother had been hunted down by the same crazy Russian girls who had been making eyes at Tommy Shelby. Now there was a good pair of reasons to work against the Whites in London, no mistake. 

“Are you saying you actually bake bread?”

“Church, mate.” Alfie crossed his heart theatrically.

“And do you bake white bread or brown bread?” Tommy smirked, clearly recalling the choice of “breads” Alfie had given them the first time they met.

“Black bread, mate.” 

“ _Black?”_

“Betcha didn’t know bread came in black, did ya?” Alfie chuckled. No one in England could match his grandmother’s black bread. “Oi make it with molasses, coffee grounds, and cocoa. Tradition back from Russia. Though you might find your inbred aristocrat is too foine for such fings.”

“I don’t think she’s touched molasses in her life. I, on the other hand, am intrigued by molasses and chocolate in bread. I thought you Russians were all boiled potatoes and vodka.”

“Clearly you’ve never tried a blintz or a pierogi, mate. And the idea of an Englishman tellin’ me my countrymen have shite for food ain’t sitting well wiv me, Shelby.”

“We’re not the ones who make cake out of salted herring—“Alfie laughingly cut him off:

“Next question! When was the last time you sang to yourself? To someone else?”

“I don’t sing.” Tommy’s face clouded. 

“And why is that, Shelby?”

“It just is.” 

Tommy remained quiet for a moment. Alfie let the silence stretch a moment, then supplied: “Oi do tend to hum to moiself around the bakery, don’t I? Hmm…” 

Tommy seemed to snap out of his funk. “Ah, yes. What’s the next question?”

“If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want?”

“The mind, I think. I’d be able to find young people to do the dirty work.” Tommy lit yet another cigarette, not making eye contact. 

“Oi think Oi’m with you there.” Tommy continued smoking, his expression Byronic. Alfie noticed the next question was “Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?” and decided to skip it. “Next question: name three things you and your partner have in common.”

“What, like each of us names three?”

“Yeah.”

“Well who goes first? The first person will have a clear advantage.”

“Roight, you and oi are bofe businessmen,” Alfie said sardonically. Tommy’s mouth twisted in a smile. “Second, we bofe have reputations for going to extreme, violent lengths to get what we want. And we bofe often betray people we work wiv.”

“Well then.” Tommy thought a minute. “We both have strong ties to our family’s cultures, mine being the Gypsies and Irish, and yours being the Jews.” 

“Thassa fact.”

“Erm…” Alfie grinned. He had made the right choice by going first. “We each use a certain public persona to keep our true thoughts and feelings a mystery from others, in order to have the element of surprise.” 

“Yew think that’s still surproising? Loike, ‘oh, would you lookit this, mate, Tommy’s making a poker face! Oi’m soooo surproised!’” Tommy’s adorable sadboy vibes were hardly something Alfie had a problem with, but _really._

_“And thirdly,”_ Tommy sardonically pretended not to have heard, “we both enjoy a good glass of whiskey.”

“That last one was a dodge, mate.”

“You took all the good ones, _didn’t you?”_ Tommy tried to make his Birmingham mumble sound like Alfie’s Cockney, but failed. Alfie got the point though, and gave Tommy a good pity chuckle. Pretty people are rarely funny. “What’s the next question?”

“For what in your life do you feel most grateful?”

“Me wits.”

“Always self-reliant, eh? Oi’m personally most grateful for me aunt Sarah’s cooking; wouldn’t have had the good ‘ealth to take over the racetracks wivvout her vicktuals.”

“I’m sure molasses bread puts some pep in the step. Next!” Good God, what number cigarette was Tommy lighting now? No wonder he mainly spoke in hoarse whispers.

“If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be? Me, oi’d love to change things so I didn’t go to school with that blighter Sabini. I still remember the little fuck running around the playground spouting wop slang and makin’ fun of me lunches. However, the aforementioned hearty Jewish food ‘elped me show that oily bastard wot was wot.”

“Is this going to turn into a story about you taking your stick and…” Tommy trailed off with a smirk. Maybe pretty people could learn to be funny. 

“Piss off,” Alfie grinned, “and answer the question.” 

“Well, my father wasn’t very much in the picture when I was a child,” Tommy took a drag of his cigarette, “and if I could change things I would have him not have been in the picture at all.”

“There’s a story there, I’ll wager.” Tommy took another drag of his cigarette instead of answering the implicit question. Alfie was pretty sure Tommy hadn’t yet exhaled the last drag he had taken, so he assumed the Peaky Blinder didn’t want to talk about it. _Yet,_ a little voice murmured in the back of his mind. It was the same voice that had prompted him to ask Tommy who he’d like to have over for dinner some two hours ago.

Tommy exhaled at least two drags’ worth of smoke. “What’s the next question? Something more along the lines of people to ‘ave round to dinner or suchlike?”

“Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story, in as much detail as possible.” Alfie watched Tommy’s face grow even more still and mask-like than usual. Even with only the small amount of information he had about the mysterious Thomas Shelby, he had known this question would be a doozy. He cleared his throat. “Er, shall I go first?”

**Author's Note:**

> Hope everyone had fun :D Look out for the next chapter in a week or two!


End file.
